“I don’t care at all. If you’d like to fish I should write a letter or maybe two and then we could swim before lunch.”
“To be hungry?”
“Don’t say it. I’m getting hungry already and we haven’t finished breakfast.”
“We can think about lunch.”
“And then after lunch?”
“We’ll take a nap like good children.”
“That’s an absolutely new idea,” she said. “Why have we never thought of that?”
“I have these flashes of intuition,” he said. “I’m the inventive type.
“I’m the destructive type,” she said. “And I’m going to destroy you. They’ll put a plaque up on the wall of the building outside the room. I’m going to wake up in the night and do something to you that you’ve never even heard of or imagined. I was going to last night but I was too sleepy.”
“You’re too sleepy to be dangerous.”
“Don’t lull yourself into any false security. Oh darling let’s have it hurry up and be lunch time.”
They sat there in their striped fishermen’s shirts and the shorts they had bought in the store that sold marine supplies, and they were very tan and their hair was streaked and faded by the sun and the sea. Most people thought they were brother and sister until they said they were married. Some did not believe that they were married and that pleased the girl very much.
In those years only a very few people had ever come to the Mediterranean in the summer time and no one came to le Grau du Roi except a few people from Nimes. There was no casino and no entertainment and except in the hottest months when people came to swim there was no one at the hotel. People did not wear fishermen’s shirts then and this girl that he was married to was the first girl he had ever seen wearing one. She had bought the shirts for them and then had washed them in the basin in their room at the hotel to take the stiffness out of them. They were stiff and built for hard wear but the washings softened them and now they were worn and softened enough so that when he looked at the girl now her breasts showed beautifully against the worn cloth.
No one wore shorts either around the village and the girl could not wear them when they rode their bicycles. But in the village it did not matter because the people were very friendly and only the local priest disapproved. But the girl went to mass on Sunday wearing a skirt and a long-sleeved cashmere sweater with her hair covered with a scarf and the young man stood in the back of the church with the men. They gave twenty francs which was more than a dollar then and since the priest took up the collection himself their attitude toward the church was known and the wearing of shorts in the village was regarded as an eccentricity by foreigners rather than an attempt against the morality of the ports of the Camargue. The priest did not speak to them when
they wore shorts but he did not denounce them and when they wore trousers in the evening the three of them bowed to each other.
“I’ll go up and write the letters,” the girl said and she got up and smiled at the waiter and went out of the cafe.
“Monsieur is going to fish?” the waiter asked when the young man, whose name was David Bourne, called him over and paid him.
“I think so. How is the tide?”
“This tide is very good,” the waiter said. “I have some bait if you want it.”
“I can get some along the road.”
“No. Use this. They’re sandworms and there are plenty.”
“Can you come out?”
“I’m on duty now. But maybe I can come out and see how you do. You have your gear?”
“It’s at the hotel.”
“Stop by for the worms.
At the hotel the young man wanted to go up to the room and see the girl but instead he found the long, jointed bamboo pole and the basket with his fishing gear behind the desk where the room keys hung and went back out into the brightness of the road and on down to the cafe and out onto the glare of the jetty. The sun was hot but there was a fresh breeze and the tide was just starting to ebb. He wished that he had brought a casting rod and spoons so that he might cast out across the flow of the water from the canal over the rocks on the far side but instead he rigged his long pole with its cork and quill float and let a sandworm float gently along at a depth where he thought fish might be feeding.